The Impossible Planet Quotes & Sayings

Only one thing is impossible for God: To find any sense in any copyright law on the planet. — Mark Twain

We're clearly not going to stop global warming at this point. We've already raised the temperature of the planet one degree. We've got another degree in the pipeline from carbon we've already emitted. What we're talking about now is whether we're going to have a difficult, difficult century, or an impossible one. — Bill McKibben

In this era of global capital triumphant, to keep responsibility alive in the reading and teaching of the textual is at first sight impractical. It is, however, the right of the textual to be so responsible, responsive, answerable. The "planet" is, here, as perhaps always, a catachresis for inscribing collective responsibility as right. Its alterity, determining experience, is mysterious and discontinuous - an experience of the impossible. It is such collectivities that must be opened up with the question "How many are we?" when cultural origin is detranscendentalized into fiction - the toughest task in the diaspora. — Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak

When the light faded, Vince strolled down to the falls. Heavy mist made the spotlights appear especially cool. He got himself a sausage on a bun, with lots of mustard and fried onions, and settled on a patch of damp grass to watch the standard Friday night fireworks. He never tires of the fascinating colours and patterns. They're impossible to reproduce on canvas. He couldn't resist making his usual wishes on them.

He wished he had someone special with him.

Maybe there's some girl on the planet who would like to hear that gold fireworks contain actual gold, he thought while watching a nearby couple laugh. Wouldn't it be great to be able to share that? — Jess Molly Brown

Fame is not so impossible for people with charisma, passion and talent. Being famous just means you have fans, and even one or two is enough to make you someone special. Ask a music fan who the best guitarist of all time is, and while one group insists that it was Jimmi Hendrix, another group swears that it was Eddie Van Halen instead. There will never be a time when everyone on this planet agrees on something like that, but luckily that's not important. All that matters is that both sides remain loyal, which they will assuming you continue to be who you are and do your thing. This is all that you need to be immortalized. — Ashly Lorenzana

You married Elora?"
"Yes, briefly." Oren emphasized how fleeting it had been. "We were wed because we thought it would be a good way to combine our respective kingdoms. Vittra and Trylle have had their disagreements over the years, and we wanted to create peace. Unfortunately, your mother is the most impossible, irrational, horrible woman on the planet." He smiled at me. "Well, you know. You've met her. — Amanda Hocking

With an amazingly balletic movement Zaphod was standing and scanning the horizon, because that was how far the gold ground stretched in every direction, perfectly smooth and solid. It gleamed like ... it's impossible to say what it gleamed like because nothing in the Universe gleams in quite the same way that a planet made of solid gold does. — Douglas Adams

Do you still believe it impossible we exist? You didn't actually think you were the only inhabited planet in the universe. How can any race be so stupid? — Ed Wood

I believe that it is impossible to stop people from using the fossil fuels, so we need to develop technologies which allow us to use them without creating environmental havoc on the planet. — Klaus Lackner

In the days when money was backed by its face value in silver or gold, there were limits to how much wealth could flow around the world. Today, it's virtual money that the bank lends into existence on a computer screen. "And unless the economy continually expands, there is no new flow of money to pay back that money, plus interest." ... "As it stands now, if banks start loaning money more slowly than they collect debts, the quantity of money in the economy goes down, and it's impossible to pay back debts. So we get defaults on houses ... our economy plunges into misery and unemployment. Under our current monetary system, the only alternative to that is endless growth. So one absolute thing we have to change is the whole nature of the monetary system ... we deny banks the right to create money." ... There's a challenge with that solution, he admits. "You're trying to take the right to create wealth away from some of the wealthiest people on the planet. — Alan Weisman

If you set out in a spaceship to find the one planet in the galaxy that has life, the odds against your finding it would be so great that the task would be indistinguishable, in practice, from impossible. — Richard Dawkins

Few people know this, but I am a trained assassin, skilled in jujitsu and krav maga. I can also, with a few folds, turn an ordinary piece of notebook paper into a lethal weapon. Or I can turn it into a butterfly, which is a great trick when I'm babysitting."
I fought a smile. "A trained assassin who babysits."
"Only the Greene twins and only because their family gets every premium channel on the planet. — Laurie Halse Anderson

There's a planet,' said Spike, 'made of water, entirely of water, where every solid thing is its watery equivalent. There are no seas because there is no land. There are no rivers because there are no banks. There is no thirst because there is no dry.
'The planet is like a bowl of water except that there is no bowl. It hangs in space as a drop of water hangs from a leaf, except that there is no leaf. It cannot exist, and yet it does. I tell you this so you know that what is impossible sometimes happens. — Jeanette Winterson

How have everything started???
Just two humans man and woman make so many people on the planet??? That's impossible, it can't happe, it's something else..... SO what you are saying Adam has fucked Eve day and night??? ANd how have they take care for so many kids???... What if the planet is flat and nasa and all other stuff are lieing??? — Deyth Banger

It was peak season and packed to the rafters and Harry presumed that was why it was so difficult to gain eye contact with the waiters. "The waiters here are like the planet Pluto," Andrew said. "They orbit on the periphery, only making an appearance every twentieth year, and even then are impossible to glimpse with the naked eye. — Jo Nesbo

I will miss it so," she said beside him. "This hell of a place, I will miss it so much. This fat body, walking mud puddle, deceived by everything, this impossible, ruinous accident of a world, these people who would truly rather hurt one another than eat - oh, there is nothing, nothing, nothing I would not do to stay here ten minutes longer. Oh, I will leave claw marks, I will drag mountains and forests away under my fingernails when I am dragged off. Such a stupid way to feel. I will be all dirty from clutching at this stupid planet, and the gods will laugh at me. — Peter S. Beagle

If our planet has seen some eighty billion people it is difficult to suppose hat every individual has had his or her own repertory of gestures. Arithmetically, it is simply impossible. Without the slightest doubt, there are far fewer gestures in the world than there are individuals. That finding leads us to a shocking conclusion: a gesture is more individual than an individual. We could put it in the form of an aphorism: many people, few gestures. — Milan Kundera

Impossible things happen. When they do happen, most people just deal with it. Today, like every day, roughly five thousand people on the face of the planet will experience one-chance-in-a-million things, and not one of them will refuse to believe the evidence of their senses. — Neil Gaiman

Emigration tears people apart. They learn about high points and personal disasters in letters and phone calls. Closer contact is impossible. As if they have landed on another planet, breathing is difficult in the spacesuits they don't dare to take off for fear there won't be enough air in the new atmosphere. Their chests rise and fall with difficulty. Their lungs hurt. The voices of the other settlers croak through the microphones in their helmets. — Julya Rabinowich

We need to reevaluate and reconsider what is appropriate human behavior. Human beings have been so successful at surviving because of our intelligence and cooperation. When we are unintelligent and uncooperative it is no wonder that our survival is threatened. We need to be educated about our health and the health of our planet, and work together to achieve goals that are impossible to achieve individually. — Joseph P. Kauffman

To coexist with communism on the same planet is impossible. Either it will spread, cancer-like, to destroy mankind, or else mankind will have to rid itself of communism (and even then face lengthy treatment for secondary tumors). — Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

We merely ask them," Mrs Narayan answered with a smile, "to attept the impossible. The children are told to translate their experience into words. As a piece of pure, unconceptualized givenness, what is this flower, this dissected frog, this planet at the other end of the telescope? What does it mean? What does it make you think, feel, imagine, remember? Try to put it down on paper. You won't succeed, of course; but try all the same. It'll help you to understand the difference between words and events, between knowing about things and being acquainted with them. — Aldous Huxley

There are ideologies of control lying behind the insistence on the need for instrumentally rational tools and techniques. In reflecting these ideologies, some believe that without the tools and techniques organizations would not be able to produce success; indeed, they would be ungovernable. Others believe that without the tools and techniques it would be impossible to improve the human condition or take action to sustain the planet. There is a very powerful belief that 'we' must be able to improve whole organizations intentionally. For some, these beliefs are impervious to reason, perhaps because it is too disappointing to accept the humbler realization that success and failure, sustainability and destruction, all emerge across populations through myriad local interactions and all anyone can do is participate as meaningfully and as influentially as possible, acting on practical judgment, in these local interactions. — Ralph D. Stacey

When your children are very young it is impossible to imagine a life where they will not live with you, where you will not see them every day or know what they are doing. As they grow up, you gradually untangle your 'self' from their 'selves' until the day arrives when you look at your child and realize the role you play in their life is no longer a central one. It's hard to recognize that your child is independent, but it's also incredibly liberating."
-- from Unlikely Destinations: The Lonely Planet Story — Maureen Wheeler

Living cells must have food in the form of sugar, they must breathe, and they must grow, at least a little. But without leaves-and therefore without photosynthesis-that's impossible. No being on the planet can maintain a centuries-long fast, not even the remains of a tree, and certainly not a stump that has had to survive on its own. It was clear that something else was happening with this stump. It must be getting assistance from neighboring trees, specifically from their roots. Scientists investigating similar situations have discovered that assistance may either be delivered remotely by fungal networks around the root tips-which facilitate nutrient exchange between trees-or the roots themselves may be interconnected. In the case of the stump I had stumbled upon, I couldn't find out what was going on, because I didn't want to injure the old stump by digging around it, but one thing was clear: the surrounding beeches were pumping sugar to the stump to keep it alive. — Peter Wohlleben

For a while, I thought I might be in a love story, but I hardly ever wake up next to anyone anymore. It still happens once in a while. When it does, the first thing I do, doesn't matter where I am, in the ocean, on the moon of some minor distant planet, doesn't matter where, doesn't matter if she knows who I am of if I know who she is or how strong gravity is or if I feel terrible or if the world is logically impossible, the first thing I do if she's there, is I tell her how nice it is to see her. — Charles Yu

When the earth is sick and polluted, human health is impossible ... To heal ourselves we must heal our planet, and to heal our planet we must heal ourselves. — Bobby McLeod

Painting someone's portrait is, of course, an impossible task. What an absurd idea to try and distil a human being, the most complex organism on the planet, into flicks, washes, and blobs of paint on a two-dimensional surface. — David Cobley

Has the universe any unity of plan or purpose, or is it a fortuitous concourse of atoms? Is conciousness a permanent part of the universe, giving hope of indefinite growth in wisdom, or is it a transitory accident on a small planet on which life must ultimately become impossible? Are good and evil of importance to the universe or only to man? — Bertrand Russell

Children, be curious. Nothing is worse (I know it) than when curiosity stops. Nothing is more repressive than the repression of curiosity. Curiosity begets love. It weds us to the world. It's part of our perverse, madcap love for this impossible planet we inhabit. People die when curiosity goes. People have to find out, people have to know. — Graham Swift

I've known both misery and happiness, lived in so many different skins it is impossible for one skin to claim me. And I have felt like a wayfarer on an alien planet at times - walking, running, wondering about what brought me to this particular place, and why. But once I was here the dreams started moving in, and I went about devouring them as they devoured me. — Gordon Parks

I tremble for our world, where, in the smallest of ways, we find it impossible ... to find room for the other in our minds. If we cannot accommodate a viewpoint in a friend without resorting to unkindness, how can we hope to heal the terrible problems of our planet? — Karen Armstrong

As you are surely aware, our planet is turning on its axis around and around in space. It turns slowly, however, making one complete rotation only every twenty-four hours; and that's a good thing
isn't it?
because if our world turned as fast as Gracie's room appeared to be turning, the sun would be either rising or setting every fifteen minutes, astronomers would be as woozy as rodeo clowns, and it'd be nearly impossible to keep our meatballs from rolling out of our spaghetti. — Tom Robbins

Even if all life on our planet is destroyed, there must be other life somewhere which we know nothing of. It is impossible that ours is the only world; there must be world after world
unseen by us, in some region or dimension that we simply do not perceive. Even though I can't prove that, even though it isn't logical - I believe it. — Philip K. Dick

It was so different than kissing Dancer. Dancer's kiss was sweet and dreamy and exciting. Ryodan's kiss had razor edges, sharp and dangerous as the man. Being in Dancer's arms was like living on the edible planet. Being in Ryodan's was like stepping into the eye of a cyclone. Dancer was easy laughter and a normal future (sans abrupt death). Ryodan was endless challenge and a future that was impossible to imagine.
Dancer accepted me any way I wanted to be without question. Ryodan made me question myself and pushed me to be the most I could be. — Karen Marie Moning

But eavesdropping acquired a new, and more intense, life after the terrorist attacks of 9/11. "Never again" was an impossible mandate, of course, but the only way to have any hope of preventing something from happening is to know everything that is happening. That led the NSA to put the entire planet under surveillance. — Bruce Schneier

Even now, the world's metamorphosis continues. It's at a rate that's practically impossible to detect with our own eyes, but it's happening. The scale of a human life - measured by the speed of Internet updates or the crawl of a working day - is ill suited to fit the dynamic nature of our planet and the fantastic organisms that continue to evolve here. — Brian Switek

The urge to impose a single classification on SF ignores the generic hybridity of many novels: incorporation of the Gothic in The Island of Dr Moreau, of Shakespeare's The Tempest in Forbidden Planet, and so on. The rise of film coincides with the emergence of science fiction. The relation between SF fiction and film has included an ongoing fascination with spectacle and extraordinary special effects like those pioneered in Georges Melies's A Trip to the Moon (1902) and The Impossible Voyage (1904). — David Seed